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The Random Texan

—

Dilletante * Raconteur

“…a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike.”

—

by

therandomtexan

in

Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman has died. One of the thoughts he left us was on the War on Drugs:

Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics

of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law

enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law

forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler

crimes of robbery, theft and assault. Drugs are a tragedy for addicts.

But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for

society, for users and non-users alike.

It takes us about a quarter of a century to wise up to what smart guys like Friedman have to say. Let’s hope we listen this time.

Tip from Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner.

Update (16 November).  Apparently, Friedman was known to play a game or two of tennis.  Tip from the Instapundit.

2 responses to ““…a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike.””

  1. mgroves Avatar
    mgroves

    From a purely economic perspective, this argument makes 100% rational sense. The problem is, we are not creatures of pure logic. There’s a large emotional component to the illegality of drugs, one that should not just be overlooked as irrational and pointless.

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  2. Spunky Avatar
    Spunky

    Logfic, schmogic.  The question that came to my mind last night was "How does the drug-using population compare to the smoking or drinking population, and how might it change under legalization?"  Would our drug problems be better, worse, or just different?  I vote for better, but different.

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